This section is from the book "Landscape Gardening", by Andrew Jackson Downing. Also available from Amazon: Landscape Gardening.
Ellerslie is the seat of William Kelly, Esq.* It is three miles below Rhinebeck. It comprises over six hundred acres, and is one of our finest examples of high keeping and good management, both in an ornamental and an agricultural point of view. The house is conspicuously placed on a commanding natural terrace, with a fair foreground of park surface below it, studded with beautiful groups of elms and oaks, and a very fine reach of river and distant hills. This is one of the most celebrated places on the Hudson, and there are few that so well pay the lover of improved landscape for a visit.
Just below Ellerslie are the fine mansion and pleasing grounds of Wm. Emmet, Esq., — the former a stone edifice, in the castellated style, and the latter forming a most agreeable point on the margin of the river.
The seat of Mrs. Gardiner Howland, near New Hamburgh, is not only beautiful in situation, but is laid out with great care, and is especially remarkable for the many rare trees and shrubs collected in its grounds.
 
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